Product Manager, Language and Product Localization

Position Overview

Wikimedia is seeking an experienced Product Manager for its Product and Technology department. This role focuses on a team dedicated to creating products and features for users of the multilingual Wikimedia sites. The Product and Technology department is instrumental in building the wiki experiences that empower our communities to achieve our vision: a world where every individual can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. This is an exceptional opportunity to make a significant impact with a globally recognized and beloved internet platform.

Wikipedia is one of the world's most popular media properties, attracting over 1 billion visitors monthly across more than 300 languages. This vast knowledge base is created and managed by a community of over 200,000 volunteer editors.

This position is with the Language and Product Localization team at the Wikimedia Foundation. Our mission is to drive meaningful product innovations, developing visually rich, mobile-friendly, and multilingual workflows. The team manages several products and services crucial for internationalization support, localization, and translation tools. Connecting a large, diverse, and globally dispersed user base presents unique opportunities for innovation. The team recently achieved a significant milestone: the Content Translation tool has been used by Wikipedia editors to create over 2 million articles since its introduction in 2015. The challenge lies in maintaining the multilingual strength of Wikimedia projects while addressing the inherent inequities in internet knowledge and creating solutions through existing knowledge-sharing practices.

As the Product Manager for the Language and Product Localization team, you will collaborate with community members, researchers, engineers, designers, program managers, and external/internal partners. Your responsibilities will include driving strategy, building the product roadmap, and delivering products that inspire users to consume, contribute, and share free knowledge in their own languages and through innovative new formats. Your work will also play a vital role in shaping the broader strategy for our multigenerational vision for the Wikimedia movement.

For optimal collaboration within the team, candidates located in regions within UTC+0000 and UTC+0530 are preferred.

Responsibilities

• Strategy Development: Develop and drive user experience strategy for Wikipedia, aligning with global trends in knowledge creation and consumption.
• User Expertise: Become an expert on the goals and challenges faced by Wikipedia users from diverse backgrounds, geographies, and experiences.
• Product Roadmap & Delivery: Build the product roadmap, define products, write requirements, develop prototypes, and manage the launch of products and features.
• Decision Making: Make concrete proposals and timely decisions through effective collaboration, data analysis, and feedback processes.
• Product Lifecycle Management: Manage products throughout their full lifecycle, utilizing qualitative and quantitative methods to measure impact and articulate long-term vision.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work with a cross-functional team to build products.
• Community Engagement: Collaborate with volunteer community members worldwide.
• Interdepartmental Coordination: Coordinate and collaborate with other departments such as Marketing, Movement Communication, or Partnerships to expand user engagement.
• Iterative Release: Release and iterate intentionally to deliver incremental value and validate hypotheses.

Skills and Experience

• Product Management Experience: 3 to 5 years of demonstrable experience as a product manager or in an equivalent role, with a track record of defining, designing, building, and managing user-facing products.
• Growth & Launch Success: Demonstrated success in growing a new user base or launching new products.
• User-Facing Product Expertise: Expertise in user-facing products, mobile application development, and mobile user experience, including creating demos and interactive prototypes.
• Geographic Experience: Experience working with users and digital communities in the Middle East, Africa, South and Southeast Asia, or Latin America.
• Requirements Writing: Experience writing requirements.